The movies come to Williamsburg (and vice versa)

Your grandfather's Merchants Square:
The "ballyhoo" for the coming attraction made almost as big a splash at the old Williamsburg Theater as King Kong himself did at the Empire State Building. (Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

by Joe McClain
| September 1, 2007

The Global Film s-GIG hit the ground running, scheduling
its first film program for mid-February at Williamsburg’s Kimball
Theatre.

The event, When the Movies Come to Town: Williamsburg and Film
History, not only examined the role that local movie houses served
as portals to culture, but celebrate the longevity and
service of the Kimball itself. GIGs--Global Inquiry Groups--are William & Mary's academic incubators, interdisciplinary and collaborative initiatives kick-started by the College's Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies.

“January 2008 is the 75th anniversary of the Kimball Theatre, which until
2001 was called the Williamsburg Theatre,” explained Arthur Knight.
“The Kimball has run—with very short interruptions for cleaning and
painting and then the larger renovation of two years ago—for 75 years.
In a small town, this is fairly exceptional.”

Knight is director of William and Mary’s Film Studies Program and an
associate professor connected with both the English and American
studies departments. Other coordinators of the Global Film s-GIG are
Christy Burns, associate professor of English, and Timothy Barnard, a
visiting assistant professor of American studies and English.

Like the mercury group, the Global Film s-GIG grew out of an
exploratory e-GIG venture that included 11 faculty members. The
February Kimball event is the first of what is expected to be an annual
film event, which, Burns stresses, differs from a film festival.

Not just movies

“They are like film festivals but instead of just showing films we also
bring in scholars who are expert on a particular field. We usually try
to bring in filmmakers themselves to talk about the making of the
films.”

In programming the event, Burns said the coordinators intend to
expand on the successful formula characterized by the late September
visit of Andrew Higson, an English scholar who specializes in the
national cinema of Britain.

“He visited classes. He gave a major talk and we had a screening of A Constant Gardener,”
Burns said. “We also had him in a seminar and he went out to dinner
with some of the faculty. So we really did everything we could have and
he was very gracious and really enjoyed it as far as I could tell. He
also conducted a faculty seminar on theories of national cinema and
went out to dinner with us afterwards. So his visit reached the general
public, our students and faculty, all in a variety of ways.”

She pointed out that the larger film events will involve multiple
screenings and multiple speakers. Directors and scholars coming to
these events will be more focused on giving talks and leading public
discussions after the films, making the events scholarly and accessible
at the same time.

“That’s a high demand to make on a speaker, but we will let them
know that we wish to serve Williamsburg’s extensive and intelligent
retirement community as well as our undergraduate population.” she
said. “As for the students, they can often follow these talks at a high
level of intellectual challenge, although speakers will know that some
students will be prepared from courses and others will walk in as
regular audience.”

The schedule for the first film event is coalescing around a number
of film screenings supplemented by one or more lectures, discussions or
other contextual presentations. Barnard teaches Cinema and the
Modernization of U.S. Culture and has developed an “add on” course
involving a number of students who have begun conducting movie-based
oral history surveys among Williamsburg residents. The organizers
intend to use the students’ oral histories as a basis for writing the
program notes. The event, like the oral histories being compiled, will
meld entertainment with serious scholarship.

Big screen/big issues

“We’re trying on the one hand, to represent the history of the theatre
and the things that have been programmed in the theatre over the 75
years,” Knight said. “So we want the overall spirit of the event to be
attractive, light—celebratory I suppose—but we also don’t want to lose
sight of the fact that the movies have been a place where Americans
have really wrestled with big issues. Sometimes they are kind of big
abstract issues like war or legends about your country—the West and the
like. But sometimes the issues are much more direct, segregation being
the obvious one in lots of places, certainly in Williamsburg.”

Knight said that the Williamsburg Theatre didn’t admit African
American patrons until the 1950s or early 1960s, and so the local
moviehouse might not have the same set of positive associations among
all members of the Williamsburg community today. One element of the
program will, in part, address segregation at the movies and include
screenings of In the Heat of the Night and Gone with the Wind.

DOG Street goes ape

The film event will show a lighter side of Williamsburg’s past, as
well. Knight said the group obtained a still photo of Duke of
Gloucester Street from 1933. “We think of that little stretch of Duke
of Gloucester Street as a high class, pristine block that’s very
controlled in its atmosphere,” Knight said. “Well this photograph shows
that the ballyhoo for the showing of King Kong
was two large painted flats of King Kong on either side of the doors
that were like about a story and a half high and a big banner across
the front that said ‘King Kong Comes to Town,’ or something like that.
Tim and I and the students are all very fond of this image because it
shows a slightly more—I’m trying to think of the right adjective—rough
and tumble, low brow, kind of Duke of Gloucester Street than maybe what
we feel like we often encounter now.”

The s-GIG participants intend to present regular film events,
usually with a global theme and often focusing on national films. Burns
mentioned that the theme for the next film event may be Bollywood.